Chapter Twenty-Four: Demanding Compensation from Japan

  At 11:27 on February 21, 1972, when the silver and white presidential plane flew over the vast Pacific Ocean and landed at Beijing Airport, the capital of the People's Republic of China, a new international strategic pattern with the United States, China, and the Soviet Union as its cornerstone was born. The scene of US President Nixon's visit to China was broadcast live via satellite to all parts of the world.

  This move improved the history of mutual hostility between China and the US since October 1, 1949, causing a global shock no less than a major earthquake. The country most severely affected by this impact was Japan, China's eastern neighbor.

  Facing the US's 180-degree sudden change, Japan, which has always followed the US in its hostile views towards China, was caught off guard. At that time, Japanese Prime Minister Eisaku Sato watched the TV broadcast with a crooked mouth. However, politics is about excluding emotions, and "those who know the times are heroes". The Sato cabinet deeply understood this principle.

  Although dissatisfied, in order to keep up with the US, the Japanese government secretly entrusted Tokyo Governor Minobe to deliver a message to Premier Zhou Enlai during his visit to China after Nixon's visit, stating that Prime Minister Sato "requested to visit China personally". However, he was immediately rejected by Zhou Enlai on the grounds that "the Sato government said one thing but did another", and announced that Sino-Japanese negotiations would not be conducted with Sato as the object.

  The Sato Eisaku Cabinet was forced to resign, and on July 7, the Tanaka Kakuei Cabinet took office. On the day of his inauguration, Tanaka expressed his desire to restore diplomatic relations with China. Zhou Enlai responded quickly on July 9, stating that as long as the Japanese government made a sincere apology and compensation for the war of aggression against China, the Chinese government would not reject the restoration of normal exchanges with Japan, but before that, the Chinese government would not have any contact or exchange with the Japanese government.

  With the statement of Prime Minister Abe, Japan is in an uproar, but some right-wing militarists are also shouting for a complete severance of all exchanges with China. Anyway, Sino-Japanese relations have been stirred up into a mess within Japan.

  The US appears to support China on the surface, but in reality secretly supports Japan's refusal to compensate China, as this compensation will exceed $10 billion, which will greatly promote China's economic development.

  Although the US currently needs to woo China for strategic considerations, this does not mean that the US is willing to let China develop. Once the global situation changes, the US will immediately change its policy towards China. Therefore, the current US attitude towards China is 30% friendship and 70% vigilance.

  The Japanese government, after careful consideration, felt that it was in Japan's current interest to establish diplomatic relations with China as soon as possible. The Tanaka cabinet believed that the relationship between Taiwan and mainland China was gradually warming up, and once they achieved true unification, the Taiwan Strait would become a strategic location controlling Japan's route to the Malacca Strait and the Indian Ocean.

  Therefore, Japan should try its best to prevent Taiwan from leaning towards the mainland. From now on, Japan will ease relations with the central government of the mainland on one hand and alleviate tensions with the Taiwanese authorities on the other.

  Moreover, Japan has experienced rapid development in the nearly thirty years since the war, and its economic scale has surpassed that of old capitalist countries such as Britain, France, Germany, and Italy, becoming the second-largest economy after the United States. In order to find new markets and sources of raw materials, China's vast population resources have entered the eyes of Japan's domestic capital, so even if it is for the sake of economic interests, normal diplomatic relations with China must be restored.

  However, at this time the Japanese government wants to restore diplomatic relations with China and must solve the problem of Japan's war reparations. On this issue, due to Lin Feng's timely planning and reminder, the Chinese government emphasized when not recognizing the Treaty of Taipei: "Japanese militarists killed tens of millions of Chinese people, causing China to suffer hundreds of billions of dollars in public and private property losses. China has the right to demand compensation for these losses."

  This means that the amount of compensation Japan owes to China will be substantial. Since Japan cannot avoid this issue, it has turned to hope for China's generosity. In order to explore China's attitude and reach an understanding on the points of contention between the two sides beforehand, a person who can facilitate communication is needed. At that time, Japanese Komeito Party Chairman Takeo Kaneko, who was visiting China, played this important role.

  Yukio Hatoyama immediately went to Zhongnanhai for an emergency meeting with Premier Zhou Enlai after receiving a telegram from Japan. He conveyed the opinions of the Japanese side in detail to Premier Zhou Enlai. After listening to several points of view from the Japanese side, Premier Zhou Enlai directly told Yukio Hatoyama: "As long as the Japanese government acknowledges one China policy; The People's Republic of China is the only legitimate government; Make a sincere apology and compensation to the Chinese people. The Chinese government will seriously consider Japan's proposal."

  On September 26, 1972, the second day of Prime Minister Tanaka's arrival in Beijing, China and Japan held their first round of foreign minister talks at the Great Hall of the People. When the negotiations reached the seventh clause of the draft on compensation issues, the Japanese representative Takase suddenly claimed that according to the treaty signed between Japan and Taiwan in 1952, the issue of Japan's war reparations had already been resolved, so there was no question of China's reparations.

  At the same time, it rejected all proposals for ending the state of war between China and Japan, and the talks ended in discord. The next day, Zhou came to see Tanaka, reversing his gentle attitude the previous day, and severely criticized Japan's behavior. He said: "I heard a report on the foreign ministers' talks this morning. Is Director-General Kojima here to sabotage the normalization of Sino-Japanese diplomatic relations? Normalization of Sino-Japanese diplomatic relations is a political issue, not a legal one. What Director-General Kojima is doing is playing with words! I don't think Director-General Kojima's views represent the true intentions of Prime Minister Tanaka and Foreign Minister Ohira."

  "If the Japanese government is not sincere, we will suspend all negotiations. There is another thing to clarify: after the end of the Anti-Japanese War in 1945, the Chinese government's statistics showed that a total of 1,879 boxes and 36 million pieces of cultural relics were looted by Japan, with 741 ancient sites destroyed. The loss of cultural artifacts from private collections cannot be estimated. Among the 30,000 oracle bones lost overseas, 13,000 were taken to Japan. As the victorious country, China only recovered 10 boxes of fossils unearthed from Zhoukoudian, over 350,000 volumes of ancient books, and 58 volumes of silk paintings collected by General Zhang Xueliang. Therefore, after receiving intelligence from Taiwan yesterday, we have revised all negotiation conditions: the cultural relics looted by Japan must be unconditionally returned to China; otherwise, China and Japan will still be in a state of war."

  Prime Minister Zhou's powerful response left Prime Minister Tanaka somewhat unprepared. The first Sino-Japanese talks soon ended in discord, with the two sides' conditions being too far apart. The Tanaka cabinet has already lost confidence in continuing negotiations, and their previous plan to get China to give up compensation has been shattered. Now that China has added cultural relic compensation, which is far beyond Japan's psychological endurance, if the Tanaka cabinet signs such a treaty today, it will be tantamount to hara-kiri tomorrow when they return to Japan. The Japanese representatives soon left China and returned to Japan in disarray.

  News of the failure of Sino-Japanese negotiations reached Taiwan, and Lin Feng just smiled, having already anticipated this outcome when he was formulating the negotiation plan for the central government. The US government was quite pleased with this result, after all, Japan had no way out now and could only follow the US to the end.

  At the same time as the Sino-Japanese negotiations, Lin Feng was also not idle. With the establishment of the Space Technology Research Center last year, Taiwan's aerospace capabilities have gradually developed. Especially with the help of mainland technical personnel, the center has completed the design and preliminary manufacturing project of a communication satellite. This communication satellite is used by Lin Feng to cultivate his own space technology talents. To be honest, Lin Feng can easily surpass the current satellites and satellite weapons using intelligent robots on the lunar base.

  However, for long-term development, Lin Feng must enhance China's scientific and technological strength. By the end of the 1980s, Lin Feng hoped that China's scientific and technological strength could catch up with the United States or at least be on par with the United States. For this goal, Lin Feng even tolerated Japan and the United States temporarily co-managing the Ryukyu Islands.

  Taiwan's first communication satellite is about to be born, and at the same time, Taiwan's Tienkung-1 rocket is also stepping into the final launch phase. It is expected to launch its first communication satellite by the end of the year, which will be the world's first non-central government-launched satellite. This also declares that Taiwan, as a local government, has already mastered ballistic missile launch technology.

  On May 26, the United States signed the Treaty on the Limitation of Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems and the Interim Agreement on Certain Measures with Respect to the Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms with the Soviet Union in Moscow after obtaining China's support. These have nothing to do with him for the time being. After inspecting the space technology center, Lin Feng came to the Taiwan Shipbuilding Factory.

  This newly formed shipyard will be renamed China Shipbuilding Company, abbreviated as CSBC. Previously, Taiwan's shipyards were not capable of manufacturing ships above 30,000 tons. Now, after Lin Feng's upgrade and renovation of the shipyard, CSBC has the capability to produce 100,000-ton aircraft carriers. However, due to the lack of necessary industrial workers in Taiwan, CSBC now has good equipment but lacks skilled personnel.

  To cultivate Taiwan's local shipbuilding workers, Lin Feng started building the naval construction mission last year, including four missile destroyers (increased to eight after military reform), these new-type missile destroyers will no longer use torpedo attacks as their main combat method against enemy surface fleets. Air defense, anti-ship, and anti-submarine warfare have become its main tasks, and torpedoes are no longer the main weapon of destroyers, air defense-specific missiles and guns have gradually become standard equipment for destroyers.

  Today, Taiwan's first domestically developed and manufactured city-class missile destroyer, the Taipei, made its maiden voyage. This 10,000-ton "giant" is Taiwan's future air defense powerhouse, with a normal cruising speed of 60 knots per hour and a top speed of 75 knots per hour thanks to its nuclear-powered engine. The weapon system tailored for it by Lin Feng includes an all-directional attack vertical launch system, 100 "Long Lance" large long-range ship-to-air missiles ready to be launched at any time, a phased array radar with 360-degree omnidirectional detection capability, and the "Chinese God Shield" system that can counter multiple batches of targets simultaneously. The data link communication system that makes up its overall combat power also makes it an outstanding representative of air defense destroyers! Of course, corresponding to its strong air defense capabilities, this class of ship has relatively weak anti-ship and anti-submarine capabilities, with only four anti-ship missiles and two 3-tube 450mm anti-submarine torpedo launchers.